You can blame Wes Bislosuknia for students having to pay for the last 50 or so years. He was in my class My freshmen year students got into sporting events on their student ID. That changed after that year because the freshman basketball team was so good that the student sections of the old field house were packed including aisles before the varsity game (freshmen couldn’t play varsity so their game was always the opening act, no one and done back then.) So after that year we were outraged when we had to pay half a buck to get in. I think we still got into FB on the ID.
The next move ought to be to move student sections to the side, not stuck in the end zones/courts so you can see both ends of the action without binoculars.